Tangles by Sarah Leavitt - review

Midge Leavitt begins showing symptoms of Alzheimer's in her mid-50s. Her handwriting starts to wobble, she loses herself in familiar parts of town, and strange, "blankety-blank" headaches shift around in her skull. Losing words and stories proves particularly debilitating for a woman who was once so enthused by them – with her husband, fellow teacher Rob, she "built a life of books and art and creativity". Leavitt responds in kind in this heartbreaking memoir, which follows her mother's gradual decline and her family's reaction to it. Her simple line drawings are rarely fascinating in themselves but they serve the story well, capturing facial expressions with subtle brevity and showing the subtext behind brave or cruel words as Leavitt's voice stretches from calm rationalising to an anguished wail and back. Stark details – accounts of tidying up after a woman whose body is no longer her own and trying to communicate with a mother who can barely recognise her family – are married with warm, funny recollections of Jewish-Canadian life.